The Rise of Henry Morcar (39 page)

“I'm afraid it's too late to hope any more,” barked Morcar: “We shall be at war in a couple of hours.”

“I daresay you're right. I still feel it was all quite unnecessary,” drawled Harington in a peevish resentful tone. “But now that we are in it I suppose we must do our best.”

“Yes. Well. You can all come here, think on,” cried Morcar as the connection began to fade.

He smoked a cigar sitting beside the wireless, and endured a church service and some musical inanities until a quarter past eleven. Then the Prime Minister's voice—the voice of a business man defeated in a bargain, thought Morcar, though the words had. dignity—announced that England was at war.

Morcar went out into the garden, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and began to shovel the sand into the bags. Jessopp came out to help; he held the bags while Morcar filled them. Mrs. Morcar, erect, undaunted, watched him from the kitchen windows. It was a glorious sunny September day. Red Admiral butterflies zigzagged about the garden; the trees were scarcely tipped at all with gold. Something cold touched Morcar's hand.

“Why, Heather!” exclaimed Morcar, stooping to pat the dog. “Come to help me, eh?”

Steps rounded the corner of the house, and David Oldroyd appeared.

“Sandbags?” he said, sketching a salute to Mrs. Morcar.

“I'm going to put these in a parapet round yon cellar window—I've got it nicely fixed up inside,” said Morcar. “Give me a hand.”

David took off his coat and began to tie the ears of the bags. Morcar thought he seemed quiet and unlike himself.

When the sand was all bagged and the bags stacked in a neat redoubt around the window of the strengthened cellar, Morcar invited David down to inspect the new air-raid shelter. He was justly proud of its neat lay-out. Steel props supported the strong old roof, which consisted of two huge slabs of stone. There were four comfortable chairs, for Mrs. Morcar, her son—“though I shall be out on the warden's job usually, I expect,” said Morcar—and the two Jessopps. There was a table, two pitchers of water, some mineral syphons, china, first aid appliances, cards, books. A hammer, a hatchet—“to cut our way out if the house comes down on top of us,” said Morcar—a couple of flashlights, a kettle with special fuel and a new oil stove completed the amenities.

“Very neat and nice,” said David.

His tone was flat and perfunctory, and Morcar felt a boyish
disappointment, for he had expected his arrangements to be admired and praised.

“You've done something similar at Scape Scar, I reckon?” he said as they wriggled through the cellar window (to test the escape route) into the sunshine. “And what about Old Mill?”

David hesitated.

“I suppose I shall have to give up Old Mill,” he said slowly.

“Give it up?” exclaimed Morcar, horrified. “Why?”

“I'm of military age, you know,” said David. “I shall be a soldier, not a manufacturer, for the next few years.”

“Ah,” said Morcar. His tone was preoccupied, for he was seeing in swift startling flashes many pictures of his own early life: Charlie and himself enlisting, Charlie winding a puttee for the first time, Charlie in the shell-hole. Charlie's face, dead, and his own 1919 face in the mirror in the train to Annotsfield.

“In fact, I'm a soldier already,” David was saying soberly. “I've got my papers—I leave tonight.”

“That doesn't mean you need give up Old Mill. Why should you?”

“I've nobody to leave in charge. I shall have to give it up.”

“Nay—I'll run it for you!” said Morcar strongly.

David exclaimed, flushed, and began to stammer incoherently in a voice which shook.

“I shall ask nothing a year as a wage, and then you can double it from time to time to show your appreciation,” joked Morcar.

“But, Mr. Morcar,” stammered David. “I can't accept—it's too good—of course I should be profoundly grateful—but—”

Intensely embarrassed, Morcar put a deterring hand on his arm. “Say nowt, lad,” he begged. Looking away, for he was moved, he saw the dog Heather sitting on his haunches, surveying the sandbags from his brown eyes with a judicial considering air. “Tell you what—I'll keep Heather for you too,” said Morcar, pointing to the dog. “Unless you'd prefer him to go to your father.”

“I think Heather would prefer to stay in Yorkshire,” said David.

It was March 1940. Morcar was out for a walk with David, who had a few days' leave. The two men came out of the gate of the park to high fields, and struck up a stony lane towards the moor. David stooped and released Heather from his lead, and the dog bounced rapturously ahead.

“It's grand to be out here again,” said Morcar, sniffing the
keen air appreciatively. “I never seem to do any walking now you're away, David. I wish you were back home, lad.”

“I might as well be back home for all the good I'm doing in the Army, at present,” said David bitterly. “The Army! My God!” But he had vented his vexation on this point already and was never one to press his own affairs at the expense of his listener's; he turned instead courteously to Morcar's grievance. “You know, the idea of this new Export Council seems thoroughly sound to me—I can't understand why you don't like it. According to the
Cash and Carry
Act in the United States, we can only get munitions from there by paying dollars and bringing the stuff across the Atlantic ourselves. Our dollar reserve is getting very low, so we must earn more dollars. The only way to earn dollars is by selling our products in the States. We make the cloth, we sell it in U.S.A., we use the purchase price to pay their munition manufacturers for aircraft and tanks and guns. They get the cloth, we get the munitions. God knows we need munitions,” concluded David.

“I know all that,” said Morcar testily, though conscious that he understood the matter better when thus simply stated.

“So we must have more exports—we must have an export drive.”

“We must have more exports, but I don't see any need for a Drive, or a Council, or a Group, or any of these things with high-falutin' names,” growled Morcar. “I've exported scores of thousands of yards of wool tissues, as the Board of Trade calls 'em, in the last twenty years, and I don't need any Government official to teach me how to do it. Especially when they've never been in a mill in their life, and most of them haven't. Look at Edward Harington!” he went on, for this was a sore point with him: “Here he is with a high-up job in one of these Ministries or Departments or what not, pretending to be an expert on industrial relations. He doesn't know a single thing about industry except what he's picked up from me.”

“That might be not inconsiderable, however,” said David, smiling.

Morcar snorted.

“Everyone in wool textiles doesn't know his job as well as you do,” urged David. “This Export Group will co-ordinate the export effort of the whole industry.”

Morcar snorted again.

“You don't mean you intend not to co-operate?” said David in alarm.

“I shan't have much choice, seemingly,” said Morcar in a disgruntled tone. “If the Government sets up an Export Group for the Wool Textile Industry or whatever the name of the thing is, we shall have to do what it says, choose how.”

“You form one of a Sub-Group, and the Sub-Group elects its own representative to the Export Group, as I understand it.”

Morcar groaned. “All this
jargon,”
he muttered crossly.

The two men reached the open moor, and paused to admire the turbulent hills which, in
mat
shades of green and sepia, rolled tumultuously away in every direction. The wild March wind roared round their ears and stung their faces; dark grey clouds chased each other swiftly across the sky, occasionally throwing to earth heavy spears of steel-coloured rain. In the distance Annotsfield, its mill-chimneys agreeably miniature, clung precariously to several hillsides. Heather galloped away, his black pointed ears emerging occasionally above the sombre stems of the plant which gave him his name.

“By the way, where's your cousin GB nowadays?” asked Morcar, as his eye identified the distant slope of Booth Bank.

“R.A.F.”

“Of course I shall co-operate with anything that's intended to help win the war,” said Morcar in a milder tone, reverting to the Export Group. “But you can't expect me to like it—any more than a dog likes being put on a lead.”

It was April 1940. Mrs. Morcar and her son sat at luncheon in Stanney Royd. Morcar had switched on the wireless so that they might hear the one o'clock news.

They listened. An involuntary gasp of horror came from both. The dog Heather, asleep by the hearth, awoke abruptly at the sound and pricked his rough black ears. They all remained silent and motionless for a long moment while the BBC droned out details.

“Ring the bell, Harry,” said Mrs. Morcar at length in a stifled tone. “I can't eat anything after such disasters.”

Morcar glanced with distaste at his own full plate and vigorously pressed the bell.

It was May 1940.

Morcar entered the lounge of the Annotsfield Club.

“… and so Churchill is Prime Minister at last.”

“Thank God!” said Morcar.

“You needn't be so chirpy about it—he only promises us blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

“Who cares?” said Morcar.

“… men of reasonable physical fitness and a knowledge of firearms should give in their names at their local police station.”

Without waiting to switch off the wireless Morcar snatched his hat, sprinted to his garage and drove as fast as he could through the blackout down to Stanney. But of course by the time he reached the Police Station there was a long queue of middle-aged men like himself, waiting to join the Local Defence Volunteers to guard England against invasion.

It was a glorious June morning; the sun poured down strongly, a steady golden blaze. Morcar felt tired. He had been up all night consulting with the military authorities about the organisation of the Annotsfield and District L.D.V., of which it seemed he was to be partly in charge, and now he had to walk over the brow from Stanney Royd to Syke Mills. He had sent his car and chauffeur to the station overnight to help with the men from Dunkirk, and it had not yet returned.

The Germans had swept through Holland and Belgium, rushed into France, cut the French and British armies in two, driven the northern armies back on the Channel ports. With a thousand little boats—“If only
I
had a boat!” wished Morcar—the British people were getting out their men. The boys were pouring back from France, pouring north into safe centres to be assembled and sorted into units. The West Riding, a little-bombed area hitherto, was crammed with these returning soldiers; it was said that there were already twelve thousand in Annotsfield alone. They were met at the station by all kinds of cars; lorries fitted with benches, ambulances, buses, private vehicles, tradesmen's vans. They were taken first to a de-lousing station, poor lads; then they were sent off, the less tired by foot, the exhausted by car, to depots, hospitals, billets. There were some of these walking along the Ire Valley Road towards Morcar now; a group on this side, a solitary lad on the opposite pavement. Their khaki was stained and filthy; they carried unco-ordinated scraps of equipment; one was in his shirt, none had caps, only one carried a gun. They looked worn, dirty, tired, unshaven, but they did not—thank God, thought Morcar—look defeated. Suddenly a shout rose behind him; he turned; one of the group had recognised the weary lad across the road and with a shout and an outstretched hand ran to him. The boy stood still and looked stupid; he swayed with fatigue, he was too tired to hold up his head. Then the hand of
the other fell on his arm, he looked up, gave a hoarse cry, and suddenly they were in each other's arms, they kissed each other.

“Brothers. Parted on the Dunkirk beaches, I expect,” thought Morcar. He blinked his eyes and walked on rather faster. “I mustn't be late at the mill or they'll get worried,” he thought, instinctively preserving the social fabric of habit. The sun blazed, the sky was brilliant azure, the trees, bright fresh green, stood as still as though cut out of cardboard. “Thank God there's no wind,” thought Morcar, seeing a picture of Channel waves. He met another group of rather older men, with filthy sweating faces.

“Got a fag, mate?” asked one hoarsely.

He gave them all the cigarettes he had about him, and could not forbear asking: “How are things going over there?” though he knew it was a silly question.

The man addressed, a corporal, grimaced and remarked in a low tone, turning aside from the others:

“I give France a fortnight.”

And then it will be our turn, thought Morcar, reading this in the corporal's eyes.

“Jerry'll soon knock all these down,” said another man, looking around him at the undamaged buildings.

The thought of Christina in London during an invasion with only Harington to protect her stabbed Morcar again, as it did so often nowadays; he turned into a small post-office and sent the Haringtons a wire, saying:
Expecting you today please come at once dont delay any longer.
But he had no hope that Christina would come, nor could he even wish that she would. Harington's government job obliged him to remain in London and Christina had refused to leave him. Morcar admired her courage and loved her the more for it; he wanted her beside him, out of danger, but could not really wish her in this hour to do less than her duty to England.

“I can't guarantee when this will arrive, sir,” the elderly newsagent-postmaster was saying. “In the circumstances …”